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White House "counselor" Kellyanne Conway was on television again on Sunday, because of course she was. This time her job was to lie to Fox host Chris Wallace about the videotape released by the White House, apparently via conspiracy-theorist allies, showing the contact between a White House intern and CNN reporter Jim Acosta when the intern attempted to take the microphone from Acosta's hand.
Asking for clarification about what Wallace meant by “edited, or as others are saying, quote, ‘doctored’ video,” Conway said it was clear Acosta “put his hands on [the intern] and grabbed the mic back.”
Okay, well, this is an absolute lie and the video proves it. Acosta didn't "grab the mic back" because Acosta never relinquished the microphone to begin with. The video shows Acosta never "put his hands" on the intern either; the only contact between the two was incidental, as the intern attempted to dodge Acosta's arm to reach the microphone in his other hand while he was gesturing, resulting in light contact after Acosta flinched. Also that we're still even talking about this is Stupid and is What's Wrong With America Today, but it's Conway's other claim that's attracting all the attention because of the up-is-down Orwellian lunacy involved.
“But by that do you mean sped up?” Conway asked in response. “Oh, well that’s not altered. That’s sped up. They do it all the time in sports to see if there’s actually a first down or a touchdown.”
It wasn't altered, it was just, um, altered. By speeding it up. Like they do in the sportsball events, when it's important to see things clearly so they speed ... the tape ... up?
It is impossible to tell, during this exchange, whether Kellyanne Conway experiences even the slightest ache of conscience as she mouths these words or whether she did or did not realize their incomprehensible stupidity after they left her mouth. It is impossible to tell, because she lies about everything, all the time, religiously, and so we don't have any videotape of Kellyanne Conway being honest that we could compare this to.
But it is a sure bet, next sportsball day, that legions of red-hatted fans will now be demanding, during replays, that umpires resolve these things by speeding up the video and seeing how it looks then. Let's go to the super-fast-mo, they'll say. You can't see what happens if you don't use the super-fast-mo.
And America continues to burn, a flaming cauldron of very stupid people saying very stupid things to "own the libs," damn the consequences and damn the torpedos and damn whatever you see with your own actual eyeballs.